Alone with the Night
by The Temporarily Gone Girl
Summary: After the masked ball, Fabian came back to Nina, but it didn't help. She's lost her best friend, and she's crying and nothing will make it better. She's alone with the night, and she's the only one who can make it right. For LuvLife4ev's Jealousy Contest.


**Set after the Masked Ball when Fabian kisses Joy. Nina's POV. Includes these words:**

**Simultaneously**

**Blah**

**Mood**

**Hypnotize**

**Demolish(ed)**

**And this sentence:**

**'I hate socks'**

Alone With The Night

I quickly trotted into the room, brushing the curtain back as the classical music played softly. I opened my mouth to call out Fabian's name but suddenly, the words dissolved in my mind as I saw him.

I almost choked. "F-Fabian?" I said. My mind was a fog and I just couldn't understand _why he was kissing her._

Before I knew where I was going I had run back and tears were streaming down my face. Simultaneously as I just wanted to get away and cry, Amber got up right in front of me. "Oh my gosh, Nina! What happened?"

I hardly knew what I was saying as I ran past her to get to the house. I wanted to be alone, and I was going to bridge that chasm.

As I ran through the cold night air, I couldn't stop the tears coming as a hollow feeling descended on me. I remembered his voice calling out to me. I don't want to hear your excuses, Fabian. Blah, blah, blah.

The bridge stood in front of me. It seemed as my footsteps echoed through the dark passageways, I had an eternity to think.

It was dark. So dark. I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. Someone who didn't know what I had lost might have thought it was just a mood, that it would pass.

I hadn't just lost my boyfriend, that was already lost. I had lost my best friend, and there was _no one_ that could understand how that made me feel. I didn't hate Joy, I just wanted to cry so bad it was hurting, even though the tears were already streaming down my face. I had lost my best friend and I would never get him back.

Suddenly, I began to fall. The darkness seemed to hypnotize me, as I sank closer and closer to the fall that would destroy my life. My life was already shattered, demolished, why did I care?

_Watch the time piece, child._

Then his arms were around me, catching hold of me, grabbing me, pulling me up. "Nina!" he gasped.

Words followed, actions - I can't remember them because they were all a haze. They were all part of the haze that was the knowledge, I was losing my best friend.

*.*

Later, I was back in my room with Amber. "Nina, are these your socks?" she said, softly shutting the door with a bucket of clean laundry in her arms.

"I hate socks," I said absent mindedly.

"Yes, I hate those socks too." Amber contemplated the socks for a minute, then put the basket of laundry down. "Oh Nina, I'm so sorry about Fabian."

"Amber, please... I just want to be alone right now." I said it the best I could but I knew it must sound awful.

"It's okay." She quietly went away out the door, probably to put the socks back and then go somewhere else.

As soon as she was gone, I wished she wasn't. I pulled the curtain down and then wished it was still up. I sat on my bed, putting my knees up and resting my face on them. My long, brown hair draped across them. I wanted to be asking myself why he would do that, but it was painfully obvious. I tried not to think that he loved her, but every time I did I felt myself breaking. Tears started to slide down my face again, entangling themselves in my hair._  
_

It was dark in the room, and as I looked at the shadows around the room I started to feel afraid. I had almost died tonight, and Fabian had saved me, Amber had been kind - but they didn't understand. I was the chosen one, and I was afraid. I didn't know what to do. Every shadow could harbour a death threat, every light patch a trick.

I didn't think that life was all emptiness. It almost would have been better if I had just wanted to die, but I didn't. I just wanted Fabian back, but he wasn't coming back.

I was alone, and I was afraid. I couldn't help thinking that somehow, it would never be the same. Would we just do what friends do, would we just 'drift apart'?

I hated that. I hated that I could just 'drift away' from my best friend, the person I felt like I'd known for forever.

The dark pressed in on my eyes and I felt like I was terribly, terribly alone. Amber had gone away. Fabian was going to go out with Joy. I had told Amber to go away, but I still felt like everyone was leaving me.

The worst thing was that it had taken me by surprise. It had knocked the breath out of me with the sheer surprise of losing him. I hadn't ever thought he would kiss her, maybe as an anxious thought sometimes, but never really. I had never thought he would do something like that, I had never thought...

Was that what was happening? Was he just forgetting me?

How could he forget me, when I could never forget him?

When it started, we had everything in common. We had the mystery, we had a love of Egypt, and we had our friendship. Now it seemed like he was more interested in Joy, more interested in having a girlfriend who wasn't caught up in some mystery.

Maybe he just had other things, and that was it. But that doesn't mean you forget, that doesn't mean you leave me all alone like this when I can't stop crying. I should have known better, that it wouldn't last. He was in a house of friends and I was a newbie - sure he might have befriended me but he'd had longer to get to know them, he had other friends and he had Joy.

*.*

A tentative rap came on my door as I sat there in the darkness, fearing every shadow and sobbing so hard it hurt. When the knock came, I knew it was him. I knew it was Fabian and it didn't make it all better, it somehow only made it worse that he was coming here with excuses. I couldn't tell if he was just here to make excuses or if he was going to tell me the truth.

As I opened it without drying my tears or doing anything to disguise the fact that I had been crying, I just wanted to scream in his face for a minute. I wanted to scream to get out, to just tell him that I didn't need him and that I didn't _care._ But, the look on his face stopped me. Then, I felt like I was just empty. We were just going to drift apart like other people, it wasn't anything special that would last forever, he wouldn't remember me forever, I was nothing.

Him being there didn't make it better, it just made it so that I couldn't cry anymore and I could pretend that it would all be alright and that I would be fine and that we would be best friends again soon.

But he wasn't ready to pretend. He shoved the door open further and he walked into my room, looking into my eyes.

"Nina, I'm sorry, I can explain." His words seemed blank, numb, meaningless.

"I'm sure you can explain, Fabian, but you don't understand." I said, my voice shaking as I looked at him. Even if he hadn't been standing right in front of me, I could have easily recalled each exact detail of his face, I knew him so well.

He just stood there, untouchable and silent.

"You don't understand," I repeated again, not wanting to say what I was feeling. I couldn't say it, I couldn't tell him that I thought we were going to come apart and go our separate ways. "I want to be alone right now." I lied. There was nothing I feared worse than being alone again in my dark room.

"Nina, I love you!" he protested as I began to swing the door gently through the night air. "Whenever I think of you with anyone else, I can't stand it! I just want to apologize, I want you to understand!"

"Y-you're _jealous?_" I asked incredulously, the beginnings of anger starting to heat.

"Okay, fine, I'm jealous, whatever you want to call it but I love you!" I could see by his eyes that he was jealous - very, very jealous.

"You kissed another girl and YOU'RE jealous!" I yelled.

A veil of shame passed over his eyes, but then he was back. "I'm sorry I came!" he said sharply and started to turn away. "Maybe someday you'll understand, Nina." he said, although he didn't think I could hear.

After I sunk to the ground, my back pressed against the door, I began to cry again. It was warm in my room, but somehow it felt cold. I realized I was in the dark again, alone. Things had gone past what I thought they would, I had yelled, he had left.

I silently promised myself that I wouldn't tell anyone about what had happened tonight, and that we would pretend it never happened in the morning. That was the best way, and in the morning we would be best friends again.

I realized something. We would be going through the motions. We would be acting like best friends, or at least I would, and I would stay like this until finally it ended and we either flew apart or got back together.

I squeezed my eyes tight shut against the dark, against the room full of memories. It didn't help, and all I could think about was Fabian.

My feet made next to no sound on the carpet floor as I got up and crossed the room. I pulled back the heavy curtain with trembling hands.

As I looked out on the lawn, on the roads below the house, and the horizon line dotted with trees, something happened. My hands stopped shaking as I looked at the moonlit landscape. I let the light reflect into my eyes for a long time, as if I were drinking it in.

"Oh Fabian," I said quietly, recalling all of my memories of him that I had tried so hard to block out a moment before.

The sky was a perfect, velvet dark and slowly, I let the curtain swing shut, extinguishing the light from the room.

As the dark seemed to rush in, I walked slowly to my bed, and slid under the stiff blanket. I stared at the wall for a minute, thinking. It seemed like it was all I could do to not cry, to not lose myself in thoughts which would drag me down. I still felt like I'd lost my best friend, and there was no one I could talk to because I'd lost the one person I could confide in.

"Maybe someday, Fabian." I said quietly. "Maybe someday..." I let my words trial off. "Maybe someday _you'll_ understand."

I was alone with the night.

**Did you like it?**

**~Iceshadow~**


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